Up to 10 Marines may have been killed by friendly fire during the deadliest battle of the Iraq war when a Marine air controller mistakenly cleared Air Force A-10 jets to shoot on U.S. positions, according to a long-awaited military investigation.
The report, scheduled to be released this week, paints a chaotic picture of a battle on March 23, 2003, in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, as Marines fought to seize two bridges crucial to the U.S. advance on Baghdad.
When Marine units around the city lost communication, commanders became confused about the location of U.S. troops. Two tank-busting jets were given permission by a controller to attack what turned out to be a forward Marine company. The documents describe 15 minutes of air attacks in which 30 mm Gatling guns, Maverick missiles and bombs pummeled friendly forces. The attacks destroyed two amphibious assault vehicles that were trying to evacuate wounded Marines.
In contrast to the descriptions of precision bombing that have come to define the U.S. military, Marine and Air Force investigators documented a chain of faulty battlefield assumptions by the Marine forward air controller and other commanders who didn’t know where their troops were arrayed and had scant means of communicating during the fight.
Portions of the report were obtained by the Los Angeles Times over the weekend. The full report that will be released this week is nearly 900 pages.
In all, 18 Marines were killed and 17 were wounded during three hours of intense fighting against Iraqi army troops and militiamen.
The investigation found that 8 of the 18 had died “solely” as the result of enemy fire. But it added, “the intensity of the enemy fire, combined with friendly fire, makes it impossible to conclusively determine the exact sequence and source of fires that killed the other 10 Marines.”
The Marines who might have been killed by the A-10s were not identified in the documents obtained by the Times.
The report was presented Saturday in briefings to relatives of Marines who died in the Nasiriyah fighting. The emotional and sometimes tense sessions unfolded simultaneously in living rooms from Southern California to to South Carolina.
Larry Hutchings, 52, of Boiling Springs, S.C., was told that his son, Cpl. Nolen Hutchings, died in a Marine vehicle hit by a U.S. missile and an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade. “They don’t know which hit it first,” he said.
The A-10s are equipped with gun cameras that take pictures of what they are shooting, but Hutchings said he had been told that the film no longer existed.
“They said they were recorded over accidentally,” he said.
Like many other family members, Hutchings questioned why the report took so long to be released. He said a Marine officer told him the investigation “sat on somebody’s desk” for four months.
Two casualty officers delivered the news in a living room in Rialto, Calif., to Lance Cpl. Jorge Gonzalez’s parents, Mario and Rosa, and the Marine’s widow, Jasty Gonzalez.
The Marines told the family that Gonzalez had died from enemy fire, suffering extensive damage to his legs and head. His 1-year-old son, who was born after Gonzalez left for the Persian Gulf region, played in the family’s living room during the briefing.
Rosa Gonzalez, the Marine’s mother, expressed anger even before the briefing began.
“What’s insulting is that it took a year for this,” she said.
The battle for the bridges in Nasiriyah began early March 23, the fourth day of the war. The mission for Charlie Company, part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., was to secure a bridge across the Saddam Canal on the northern edge of the city.
Riding in a convoy of 11 amphibious assault vehicles, Charlie Company ended up alone at the north bridge, with other units scattered at southern and eastern edges of the city.
As the surrounded company fought to hold the bridge, the Air Force A-10s began circling overhead. Initially, some of the Marines felt a sense of relief, but the planes turned against them.
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A Marine forward air controller, stationed with a unit southeast of the bridge, cleared two A-10 attack jets to fire on vehicles north of the bridge. The controller believed he was with the lead Marine unit and that only Iraqis were north of the canal, according to a separate Air Force report on the attack.
When the forward air controller cleared the jets to attack targets north of the bridge, he could see neither the jets nor the targets. The controller, the report states, notified the A-10s “that no friendlies were north … of the canal.”
The two jets then dropped three bombs on Marines’ positions, the report states. Marines on the ground, apparently mistaking the bomb explosions for Iraqi mortar fire, did not realize they were under attack by U.S. aircraft until the A-10s began firing at them with 30 mm guns, the report states.
As Marines began evacuating wounded from the battlefield by driving four amphibious assault vehicles back across the bridge to the south, they were attacked again by both A-10s.
The pilots told investigators, according to the Air Force report, that the Marine forward air controller instructed them “not to let those vehicles get across the bridge.”
One of the jets attacked and hit one of the Marine vehicles with a Maverick missile 100 meters south of the bridge “and destroyed it.” The second jet fired a Maverick at a second Marine vehicle 200 meters south of the bridge and destroyed it as well.